To be fair the Epic dispute was never about the App Store fees. Epic made 3% of their Fortnite profits from iOS and 60% from PlayStation platforms. Why not go after Sony?
High praise and well deserved. ☺️
The human rights issue is not just about avoiding war. When you join a common market with lots of other countries, who don't even share the same word for ****, then you need a good level of protection. You can't compete with British privateers, Spanish conquistadors, Swedish vikings, French revolutionaries, Belgian colonists, Italian mafiosi and German slave labor camps in an open market.
Poor Apple, made themselves an easy target for public defiance of oppressive monopolistic structures in the gaming industry. Like when Rosa Parks attacked the Montgomery bus system for its inherent racism and not something that's more vital to the survival of black people.
The reason console manufacturers are not being classed as ‘gatekeepers’ is because you always have the option of buying discs or game codes from a variety of retailers.
I believe they only lowered to 15% for app subscriptions, all games purchases and subscriptions remain at 30%
Of course Linux is more open. D'uh. This thread is about gatekeepers, not about which OS is the most open. macOS is far more open than iOS. There's no monopoly App Store on macOS. Users are free to obtain software from outside Apple's walled garden. Users can download source code and compile it themselves. Developers can use whatever payment processing system they want in their apps. Apple doesn't get to decide what apps are allowed on the platform. Etc.
I don't know that they prefer control. Most people aren't very tech savvy and Apple delivers a great user experience. I think they prefer the user experience, not being nannied and coddled by some corporation. Where is the data showing that being controlled by some corporation is what users want?
macOS is not closed down. You can repeat that all you want, but it won't make it true.
My point was that Epic paid so little to Apple in App Store fees overall it really shouldn’t have bothered them at all.
Never going to happen. The writing is on the wall. The EU is the just the beginning. Other countries are also taking aim at the App Store, including Japan which has a huge percentage of iPhone users. It's only a matter of time before we see legislation in the US too. It might still take a few years, but Apple's digital pimp model is coming to an end.
I seriously doubt Apple will develop an EU-only version of iOS. As you note, third party app stores aren't even popular on Android, so Apple is unlikely to lose much money when it allows third party app stores and/or downloading apps directly from developers. Maintaining a separate EU-only version of iOS seems like a lot of work for questionable gain.
Respectfully, it absolutely cannot "be said about any marketplace" because marketplaces are as a general rule not privately owned. The housing market is not privately owned, for example. It is a public domain, regulated by the state. The Apple App Store *IS* privately gate kept, and the owner of that store can (and does) act as a private regulator AND affects prices AND takes a cut.Nope. Netflix and Spotify are both major players and are not free. Again, Apple doesn't set their pricing or even take a cut.
That could literally be said about any marketplace. It has nothing to do with what we are talking about.
You are trying to limit a market as an individual marketplace. When talking about monopolies and antitrust, a market is defined by goods and services that can be reasonably substituted for one another. I can get Netflix through the web or Apple or Google or Amazon or Vizio or Samsung or... they are all interchangeable.
You are incorrect per the definition that you provided. They obviously don't have sole power, because you already acknowledged that pricing power rests with the developer.
Here's how it is defined in the US.
Monopolization Defined
The antitrust laws prohibit conduct by a single firm that unreasonably restrains competition by creating or maintaining monopoly power.www.ftc.gov
I still disagree. The amount they spent on the lawsuit with Apple dwarfs the amount lost to them in App Store fees. Epic were quite happy to pay the fees and get up on stage with Apple when promoting Infinity Blade.
Again, the OS is a separate charge and a separate purchase. The issue isn't whether it's sold separate from the rest of the computer; the issue is that you are charged separately and purchase the OS separately for everything not Apple. Apple does not sell their OS. You do not purchase their OS. You do not own their OS. Check your contract and their TOS.
See above. The issue is that MS was selling a product in Windows. Apple is not selling their OS.
This is the non-sensical part. Define "dominant". Because they don't. They give a nebulous set of kinda-parameters and that's it.
Walmart does not own Frito Lay. The Apple App Store does not own your app unless you make it as an employee of Apple. The store does not and cannot set the price of the product unless they manufacture it themselves. Hence the MSRP. MSRP only applies to companies selling their own product through their own vendors. Hence there is no MSRP on a used car as it does not apply when the manufacturer is not selling the car through one of their vendors.
Absolutely they could but the only party benefitting from that arrangement is the store who is still getting their cut undiminished. It's still incumbent upon the app dev to set a sales price. And unless there's a competing app, which has nothing at all to do with the number of stores available, there is no incentive to put an app on sale just because there's multiple stores.
Blame governments and trial lawyers. You think Apple wants to sit around and rewrite them all the time?
You use the word fascist a lot but it doesn’t mean what you think it does. California and all the regulations they have put in place over the last few decades is the very example of the word you like to use so often. Just because something has outer physical beauty doesn’t mean the core isn’t rotten. California is the hot girl every one wanted to date but turned out to be a total b*tch that no one wanted to spend an extended amount of time with. Don’t worry, as normal people continue to leave and are replaced with the dregs that are currently moving in, you’ll be having a great time.
Companies aren’t forced to make iOS apps or appear on the platform. They can build their own web app if they chose.
😂 “Soft power”, how many times has Europe attempted and or flat out controlled the world? There has been at least one physical armed conflict going on in, or involving Europe since the beginning of recorded history.
Look up becoming a shareholder. You can do those very things.
😂 Gosh, who could have seen this coming, right? Oh wait a minute, I remember Eurpoe being warned about this very thing not too long ago. Instead of doing something about it they thought it would be better to laugh at the messenger than to take action. 🤗
Use the laughing vote. It’s appropriate.
Nope. A small startup can use the same setup as Netflix to avoid the App Store cut.
Obviously, the definition that you are linking to is different that what you quoted. And, once again, duopoly is not the word that I originally said you defined arbitrarily. It's just the tangent that you went off on.It's not "my definition", it's a definition I pulled from the "Economics Online" website.
What Is a Duopoly?
A duopoly is a market structure that is dominated by two firms, while a pure duopoly is a market where only two firms exist. Most duopolies, however, are markets where the two largest firms control more than 70% of the market share. The Characteristics of a Duopoly * Strong barriers towww.economicsonline.co.uk
In the case of a company having 99% share of a market, that company would presumably be labeled a monopoly.
I was not sarcastic, not did I accuse the other poster of being dishonest. In fact, I thought they were being refreshingly honest.
I don't know what you are talking about. Apple's developer agreements will likely need to be updated in the EU. Not their SLAs.
Of course the Mac has an increased security risk because it is more open than iOS.
What are you talking about? You defined a marketplace as "a place where other companies sell THEIR commodities, and [a company] takes a service fee "cut" for each sale." Obviously thousand of private marketplaces exist. I sell through them all the time.
I never said it did. All I said was that (per your own definition), Apple does not have ""sole power to set pricing" for apps.
It's exactly the point in that we are discussing how markets are defined in antitrust law.
